Topic: Games You Feel are Overrated

@Maxz How dare you have non-judgemental opinions on things that acknowledge the diversity of opinion without calling everyone who thinks differently from you a piece of trash!?

This is the internet and we don't take kindly to reasonable types.

Melee: Both games after this improved on Melee in various ways, yet people still play tourneys with Melee because they've so thoroughly mastered this glitchy game with no compelling single-player. Subspace Emmisary and boss battles are calling my name!

Golden Sun: I'll get roasted for this one. I played some of the first game, but I couldn't finish it because the characters/plot felt cliched and I hated getting so many yes or no choices that affected nothing. I'll stick to Mario Golf Advance Tour if I want impressive sprite work.

Super Mario Galaxy 2: The embargo on Rosalina really hurt this game. I hoped riding on Yoshi would justify more of the same, but riding Yoshi is something I don't think any of the 3D Marios have nailed down.

Sonic Colors: I actually preferred the Werehog stages to the daytime stages in Unleashed. Go figure.

Sonic 2: My favorite parts are the Tails mechanic (he never got in my way, what's everyone talking about?) and Oil Ocean. Nothing else holds up in comparison to Sonic 3 & Knuckles, the Sonic Advance trilogy, or the two Sonic Rush games. Sonic 2 just isn't the franchise's golden standard in my eyes.

Mother 3: I get that it's a tragedy and such, but so much of the game is a depressing slog to get through. So many times I'm just playing a character that's being followed around by a bully who abuses them and kills my enjoyment. The trippy ending gave me no closure when it could have been the bittersweet catharsis I needed.

The Street Fighter franchise: It just seems like a boring ip compared to other fighting games. I don't like anything about Ryu's character, which bugs me because Ken or Chun-Li could potentially turn the series around for me if they were protagonist. As is, I wish the more thematically-coherent Darkstalkers was the king of Capcom.

Mario Kart 8: This one comes down to its previous entries having more memorable tracks (Wii) or an amazing gimmick (2 racers in Double Dash). No real complaints about 8 on its own, but I had more fun with those other two.

Bayonetta 2: I'm probably being unfair with this one since I only played the demo. Still, the visuals were all so over-designed and the combat didn't hook me at all. Bayonetta herself hasn't struck me as a female gaming icon on the level of Samus or Lara Croft regardless of what I've read online or her being in Smash.

And that's all I can think of currently.

Oh, I've got one. Firewatch: A three hour exploration of the inability of indie devs to create 3D character models. Also some nice posters and skyboxes

Very well said! And all that needs to be said, really.

You missed the bit where I wasn't actually having a go at people for not liking stuff I do. The only comment I made even remotely close to that was in regards to Ocarina of Time. I simply said that the love for that game isn't purely nostalgia goggles because it's one of my favourite Zeldas despite me first playing it '08.

As one of the people derailing this thread? I don't have any issue with people disagreeing with the status quo. The issue I have is with the idea of an inherently negative thread. Especially one built around the idea of pointing specifically at content people love and tearing it down.

I think the value of those threads over this one is that the focus isn't so narrow and negative. If you're posting in the "games that surprised you" thread you're building a game up. There's a lot of value in highlighting something that you like. In the "unpopular gaming opinions" thread you're more likely to talk about a trend or genre. I just think there's something particularly nasty and juvenile about the idea of specifically pointing to something that's critically acclaimed and/or popular and tearing it down.

@skywake You're talking like being negative is a sin, then using that as an excuse to insult everyone else in this thread. I don't buy your argument, you just seem like another offended fan who can't bear to see the name of a favored game dragged through the mud.

@LArachelDisciple If nothing else, Mario Golf Advance Tour is amazing. To the extent that all RPGs struggling to reinvent themselves should probably just become golf sims. Tales of Golphonia. Dragolf Quest. Final Fastasy: Advance Golf Tactics.

In fact, imagine a tactical warfare golf-based RPG! It'd be like Advance Wars, but instead of moving artiterly around a chess-like grid, you'd launch golf-ball bombs across the map that would explode after a certain number of hits. Different golf balls/grenades could have different blast radii, damage outputs and flight ranges, and different artillery would have their own effects that would combine. Maybe you could other effects like healing, so you could restore your own team with some finely aimed friendly fire. Obviously, the closer you got to you target, the more impact the effect would have. Maybe you could even have destructible environments, so you could blow up scenery that would collapse onto your enemy, doing more damage than the explosion itself.

This post started off largely as a joke, but I now genuinely want a tactical golf warfare RPG in the style of Advance Tour...

@Maxz I'd play Dragolf Quest. You know, if the trailer was good. But how would you putt in Tactical Golf?

@LArachelDisciple Do you mean without risk of blowing yourself up? Because you've got a point about not wanting to be anywhere near the blast radius of the golf ball, which would put emphasis on long range shots.

Perhaps there could be extra challenges where you have to get several balls into holes (around an enemy base) which could all be detonated remotely and simultaneously in order to bring it down. Or something. The possibilities are endless!

When was I offended by a game I like being dragged through the mud? I haven't really commented on people's lists of games much at all. There was that one comment I made about OoT fans not being 100% driven by nostalgia. I then said that not understanding the hype of Skyrim is probably reasonable. So I don't know why you're claiming that I can't bare my favourite games being ridiculed. That's clearly not what I'm talking about.

Really, my complaint is about the thread topic itself. I was talking about the idea of calling something overrated in general. I think tearing down something a lot of people like is an unproductive and juvenile thing to do. It's a thing that far too many people do and it rarely ends well. A thread dedicated solely do that isn't something that I really like the idea of. That's all I said.

If you dislike my point of view? Maybe you should practice what you preach. Perhaps you should not get so offended by the idea that someone thinks calling things overrated is a bit childish. If you must know my opinion on this thread is mostly informed by the sorts of ideas expressed in this video
(the video has language if that offends you also)

@skywake OMG, just leave this thread already.

I'd have gone through deleting all your comments if they, and the replies to them, hadn't taken up about 50% of it.

You disagree with the tenet of the thread and consider it borderline trolling, so you're going to hang around and troll it; you're too cool to think saying a game is overrated is cool, but apparently not quite cool enough to keep it to yourself and just browse elsewhere, you need to make sure everyone knows it.

I only came here to say that Xenoblade Chronicles is overrated, but I've been beaten by at least 3 other people. XC is the one game I've tried in the last 8 years, from all sorts of genres and periods in time, where I can't understand why people seem to like it so much.

There's been plenty of games I've not particularly gotten on with but can still appreciate why others like them, but not XC - not to the point people put it in their GOAT lists.

I must admit I don't understand the demographic for Xenoblade. It's like a venn diagram of people who've never seen a shonen anime before to recognize the tropes, and those who have never played a competent action RPG before. And of course they can't have played literally any MMO, because that would spoil the grind.

Here's a thought. Is a discussion about the thread topic itself reasonable or not? I thought it was. The thread is about calling games overrated, I don't think people should be. The thread is literally designed to be a bit controversial so I don't see what the big deal is.

To be fair I didn't exactly say that. I said that calling things overrated is generally one of two things. It's either someone dragging down something that's popular just to make themselves seem a bit more "underground" for not liking it. Or it's just a general criticism about something with an unnecessary jab at the people who do like it.

And maybe you're right about that particular game. It's honestly not a game that I've been interested enough to even give a spin so I can't really comment on it fairly. I just don't see the value in the second half of that sentiment. That you and I don't understand or like it? That's cool. No problem. When you point to the people who rated it highly in the first place and effectively have a go at them for liking it? That I don't get.

Calling something overrated is more than just saying "I don't like it". It's more of a "I don't like it and everyone who does is wrong/stupid"

@Haru17 Well I don't know what Shonen is, and I've never played an MMO, and my experience of competent action RPGs is light at best, but I still don't like XC.

@gcunit It's also just not very well-written in a general sense

What didn't you like about it and how far did you play?

Well the word "overrated" has been removed from the title, and now only survives in posts such as this which keep referencing it with regards to what is becoming a slightly tired discussion.

I think we're now comfortably in "let's discuss games that didn't meet our expectations based on popular opinion" territory, rather than, "let's hate on cherished games for no reason other than self-aggrandisement" (if we were ever there at all).

There's still a risk that we may climb so far up our backsides that we get thoroughly lodged in our own hipster glands, but I think we should actually wait for that to happen before criticising it, rather than dismiss the thread on principle because it might facilitate such comments.

What with the internet hype machine creating its own distortions, and the ease with which mass communication builds accepted narratives, I think there's legitimate discussion to be had in stating our own experiences if they differ from accepted wisdom - especially with older titles that we may have had time to reflect on. And I think it's perfectly possibly to do so without being insufferably arrogant or faux-edge.

So far, I don't think we've had any arguments based on anyone's actual opinions about games — only the sort of opinions people might produce if given a thread such as this to state them in. Many of the examples referenced are definitely things that happen on the internet (see Radiohead review), but it still seems a bit hypothetical to fault the thread on principle.

When I flip out at someone for daring to insult the majesty of Face Invaders, then the thread can be called a fundamentally a bad idea.

Ok, ignore all my whine about this thread but please keep the posts up so you can laugh at them. I guess ultimately my disagreement with the thread is with the idea of it not the way people are using it. The way I see it game reviews and the community in general don't get it wrong. When I feel the game should be rated higher or lower? I always blame myself. Either I'm into it despite the flaws people rightly point out or I don't understand what other people see.

It's a subtle thing, I just don't like the idea of some hipster skimming through someone's game collection and whining about them owning Zelda or Portal 2. I think that dude is a jerk. That's what I was thinking this thread represented even if, to be fair, most people commenting weren't behaving like that at all. So with that in mind here are a few well received games that I didn't understand:

Super Paper Mario: I made the mistake of playing the N64 original on the Wii VC just before this game came out in Australia. It made it really hard to enjoy the Wii version because the N64 version had so much more character. I just really didn't enjoy it that much

The Witcher 2: I got it for almost nothing and gave it a spin just to see what all the fuss is about. It's just really not my sort of thing. I'm not a huge fan of that style of game.

Darksiders 2: I know some people are really into this game but I don't really get it. Maybe they're into the tone of it a bit more than I am or something. I got a copy of it for almost nothing and played through a bit of it. I had absolutely zero motivation to keep playing it.

.... I'd list some more but honestly if I don't enjoy a game I tend to forget about it. And a lot of the games I haven't enjoyed tend to also be games that I don't ever see anyone praise. There's a lot more stuff that I really liked which a lot of people don't like. But that's the internet I guess.

@Haru17 I've played about 60 hours, but I forget the name of the boss I'm at, or what Level I'm at.

Specific things that negatively impact my appreciation of the game:

• The whole gems and gear thing I find unsatisfying, it's just not a fun or interesting mechanic, and if I bother to try and manage them for the sake of improvement, I don't really 'see' any difference in my experience of the game. Sure, an enemy's HP might start dropping a little bit faster, but because it's all auto-attack I don't 'feel' any difference. I just don't see enough incentive in those systems. Grinding sucks, but I'd rather grind than bother with gems etc.
• Just in general, any game that is going to rely on battling as much as XC does, auto-attack with Arts clicking has to be the least fun or interesting way of delivering it.
• Side quests are lame, as is the amount of reward you get for bothering to complete them. "Take these cookies to my nephew and then come back and tell me when you're done. Oh, btw, good luck finding me again".
• As grand as the setting for the game is, actually travelling through the game's environment is so boring and tedious. While some of the backdrops are eye catching, the landscape is really barren and bland. The ropey running and jumping animations only make moving around worse. Sure, you can fast travel, but I've never found that a satisfying mechanic - it's not like having fast travel makes a game great, it just takes the edge off the tedium. The only reason I would consider using fast travel in Breath of the Wild is because of how easy it is to get sidetracked in that world - if you really want to focus on completing an objective sometimes it's just safer to fast travel. In XC fast travel is there because normal travel is tedious.

That's pretty much it. The tl;dr version is that the only incentive I have to continue the game is to find out what happens in the story; nothing about the gameplay is enjoyable for me.

I don't have any issue with the story itself, not being familiar with much anime.

@gcunit I'm basically the same, although I have more of an issue with the writing and less of one with fast travel. Auto-attack and fetch quests are basically the MMO experience, so you can't say you haven't played one before anymore, haha. The watching health bars go down nature of it is pretty bad, but on top of that the game doesn't give you any indication of whether what you're doing is working or not. Not unless you grind until you're overleveled and fights become a snooze.

The side quests are... yeah. Not much to say besides 'FFXV without voice acting.'

And I'm glad you've seen through the environments. I'm always so confused when people wax poetic about Bionis Leg — it's just a giant, flat field with a looping track and skybox! The 'verticality' people associated with Xenoblade is just the developers cutting out strips of that flat land, arching it up in the sky, and placing high level mobs atop of it.

There's nothing about Xenoblade that embodies the naturalism and level design found in a lot of Skyrim's areas. That kind of physical, 3D as in not only broad but also vertical level design what I want from an open world game, and that's a big reason why I can't accept anything less.

I want this:

Not this (Anything above basically Reyn's head is just skybox. Also this is a screen from Dolphin.):

To tell the truth, I prefer Donkey Kong country returns rather than Tropical freeze. Tropical freeze is still a good game imo but Country returnns was much better and I've been rather disappointed with TF despite I still found it fun and enjoyable

Jungle beat was very fun but imo less intriguing and with a less pleasant graphic style so Country returns is the best DK game so far for me.